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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Samsara (April 5th and 6th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[SAMSARA screens Friday April 5th
at 9:40 pm and Saturday April 6th at 7:00 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Yes, the held-over-from-2012 G.I. JOE
sequel may be drawing all the mouth-breather audiences this week, but
for cineastes with loftier concerns than whether Sgt. Slaughter will
show up, there are the movies of director-cinematographer Ron Fricke
and producer Mark Magidson. Alumni of the team who made the original
art-house sensation KOYAANISQATSI under director Godfrey Reggio, they
specialize in similar head-tripping, non-narrative visionary features
that are more like guided meditations for the eye.

Their
BARAKA (1992) was a keeper, a transcendental tour of forms of
religious worship internationally. Ultimately, it seems, all the
movies in this genre default to the mystical, along with a
practically grandfathered-in KOYAANISQATSI theme of ultra-synthetic,
modern, high-speed, high-tech life being madness compared to the
vanishing village ways and tranquil traditions of old. Their 2011
companion piece (it shares a website URL with BARAKA), SAMSARA - a
Sanskrit word translating as "wheel of life," or so I'm
informed - falls in line with that. And, yes, it is perhaps a fair,
if ultimately small-minded criticism to say that without that same
awful high-tech society, the ability to make films such as this, let
alone their websites, wouldn't exist.

Shot around the world in
Panavision Super 70mm format (take that, digital-video), it is a flow
of images and sequences that include Balinese dancers and their
hypnotic chimes; the absurd indoor ski chalets of desert Dubai, the
placid Iron-age bodies of human-sacrifices found in northern
European peat bogs; deserted cities after natural natural disasters
(flood/tsunami/hurricane, by the looks of it); high-tech assembly and
disassembly lines, including non-explicit but still depressing animal
"processing"; Muslim massing in Mecca; Christian baptisms
of pilgrims of all ages; and achingly beautiful sunrises, sunsets and
starfields in time-lapse.

[A bookend has a group of Tibetan
Buddhist monks creating one of their intricate, vibrantly colored
"sand painting" mandalas destined not to last. I don't want
to make nasty insinuations, but not so long ago some guest Tibetan
monks created one of those things in Cleveland. Not long
afterwards...LeBron left. Bible-thumpers might declare that's what
you get, stirring the Apocalyptic Wrath of the Almighty by bowing to
the heathen. Hey, I'm only sayin'.]

Some of the ironic
juxtapositions are more accessible than others. Standouts include a
breathtaking cut from young African mother to a tribally tattooed dad
cradling his youngster in an urban cityscape. The obese and the aged
prepping for plastic surgery segue to spooky warehouses of nude
department-store mannequins, to gyrating young Asian bar girls in
bikinis - and then to dolls and a Japanese geisha in full makeup who
only gives away that she's for real when she sheds a tear.

A
sequence of gun ownership, weapons manufacturing and firearms
fetishism in the Third World and the "developed one" is
also something you wish would be seen by the level of viewers whose
prime concern right now is how the Joes will beat Cobra this time.
Fricke/Magidson are no fools, and they don't expect you to be either.
I would guess only lifelong National Geographic magazine hoarders
would "get" the majority of this movie's jaw-dropping
sights (like robotics engineer Hiroshi Ishigura and his artificial
double) without explanatory liner notes - but that's like saying you
can't jam to Pink Floyd's The Wall or the Who's Tommy concept albums
if you don't grokk every single note or lyric.

Go see SAMSARA
(with, incidentally, music by Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance and
Marcello de Francisci), even if you have to take a eco-incorrect
automobile or check showtimes on the toxin-producing PC device
to do it. (4 out of 4 stars)